Memories of Coffee – A Story from my Past.,
Although not strictly pertaining to Jamestown I see these the following excerpts as relating to my life and therefore to Jamestown which has been my chosen home for over 50 years.
“There are few things I enjoy more than a “nice” cup of coffee”. I have deliberately used the word “nice” rather than good, because although I may not be able to judge a “good” cup of coffee, I certainly know what I like.
I don’t drink a lot of it, but it is certainly one of my great pleasures to sit and savour a cup of coffee, which to the great horror of many coffee “connoisseurs” (corner sewers), I will drink with relish at any temperature. I feel that perhaps this is a hangover from my sea going days where cups of coffee were often interrupted and left sometimes for hours. The Little Woman (note the capitalisation, hereinafter “TLW”) has never quite got over this peculiarity, and will shudder visibly when I walk in the back door at 11:00 AM, and finish off my now stone cold cup of breakfast coffee. Yet she will go to the fridge and have an iced coffee without a second thought,…… (mine has more flavour and I find Iced coffee far to milky) Eeeewwww,…yuk.
I have always preferred coffee to tea, for as long as I can remember, even long before I was allowed to drink the heavenly brew. The smell of good coffee immediately transports me back to the cold winter’s nights of my early childhood, when my Father would bring home a paper bag of cracked coffee beans from one of his old workplaces, where he maintained friendships until the day he died.
Before I was born Dad had his own truck and worked as a deliveryman for Henry Berry’s, who were providores and suppliers to the restaurant and hotel trade. Two of the items that they stocked were coffee beans and raw chocolate, bitter and still containing coarse fibres of cocoa bean. Both of these things bring back pleasant memories of almost 60 years ago, where we all sat huddled around the two bar electric heater in the small kitchen at the back of our Newsagency listening the the radio. Mum knitted and Dad read the paper, whereas Robert my brother stoically endured the cold of his upstairs bedroom, where he read his “Modern Motor” magazines (He was a car enthusiast as long as I can remember), and assembled model aircraft. Yes,… the smell of “Tarzan’s Grip” and aircraft dope also sends my mind skittering back through the years to those early days
Some time prior to our evening meal, dad would have sought out mum’s smallest saucepan which he would then fill almost to the top with the cracked coffee beans, it was then filled similarly with water and put on the wood stove to gently boil for an hour or two. By the time that the meal was finished and the drying up done, the smell of coffee would fill the kitchen, (and no doubt much of the house)
During the first hour or so, as it boiled, dad would carefully top up the brew with hot water from the kettle several times and then when it was nearly done, the now well boiled beans were scooped out of the saucepan with what resembled a long handled tea strainer and the result was carefully examined for colour, smell and consistency and when judged as being ready, a desert spoon full of sugar was added, he would then move the saucepan onto the hotter part of the stove top and allow it to boil down into a thick creamy essence.
The clinking of mum’s demitasse cups was the signal for brother Robert to come down from his upstairs room, who being 13 years older than I, was allowed to partake,… the smell by this time was heavenly and almost overpowering, as dad carefully poured out his “Turkish Coffee” into the cup which was then sipped and savoured as one would expect from a pair of the world’s top coffee judges.
The pleasure that was evident on their faces was almost beyond description, and I am sure that it had a profound influence on my appreciation of coffee to this day.
To be continued…..
